In the recent life of St. Patrick by Dr. Todd, this, though treated lightly as a matter of slight import, is really the marrow of the book.
The mission of St. Patrick has been uniformly attributed to Pope St. Celestine, who held the chair of Peter from 422 to 432; and is intimately connected with a previous one of the deacon of Celestine, St. Palladius, who made an unsuccessful attempt to christianize Ireland; and the mission of St. Palladius grew out, it would seem, of a deputation of Gallic bishops to Britain to check the progress of Pelagianism.
Todd endeavors ingeniously to break up these connected facts. He seeks to show that Palladius was a deacon not of St. Celestine, but of St. Germain, Bishop of Auxerre; that the history of Palladius and Patrick have been confounded; and that Patrick was not sent to Ireland till 440, and consequently could not have been sent by St. Celestine. This would, to some extent, deliver the early Irish Church from the terrible responsibility of having received its origin from Rome.
Dr. Moran's work is made up of three essays: "On the Origin of the Irish Church and its Connection with Rome;" "On the teaching of the Irish Church concerning the Blessed Eucharist;" and, on "Devotion to the Blessed Virgin in the Ancient Church of Ireland."
In the first of these essays he meets the arguments of the Senior Fellow of Trinity by a careful and close examination, showing that both Palladius and Patrick owed their mission to Rome and to St. Celestine, and settles conclusively the date of St. Patrick's landing in Ireland.
He discusses at length the mission of Palladius; sketches the life of St. Patrick, and his connection with St. Germain; and states briefly the proofs of his Roman mission. He then refutes the array of modern theories in regard to the great apostle from Ledwich to Todd, and accumulates evidence to show how the early Irish Church regarded the holy see.
The period when Saint Palladius and Saint Patrick successively proceeded to Ireland, was not one of obscurity. The church was full of vitality, and met Nestorius in the east, Pelagius in the west, the Manichees in Africa, with the power and might of a divine institution. It was the day of St. Augustine, St. Germain, of Vincent of Lerins, of Cassian, Chrysostom, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Jerome. St. Basil, St. Ambrose, St. Athanasius, even, and St. Anthony were still fresh in the memory of those who had heard the words of life from their lips, or gazed on them in reverence. The Council of Ephesus was actually in session defining the honor due to the Mother of God. The canon of Holy Scripture had been settled thirty-five years before, in the Council of Carthage, and St. Jerome's version was gradually supplanting the Vetus Itala in the hands of the faithful.
The monastic life, a vigorous tree planted at Rome by Athanasius, had already spread over the Latin Church, in its multiform activity and zeal. It grew under the mighty hand of Augustine, was nurtured by that St. Martin of Tours, whose reputation was so widespread. It gave a Lerins, with its school of bishops, writers, and saints; the abbey of St. Victor at Marseilles, where Cassian prayed and wrote.
But if this was a great age of the church, the Roman empire showed no such signs of vitality. It was tottering to its fall. Along its whole western territory, stretching from Italy to Caledonia, the pagan barbarians of Germany were pressing with relentless power, threatening destruction to Roman, romanized Briton, and romanized Gaul—for all of whom the German had but one name, still preserved by the race, the Anglo-Saxon terming the descendants of the Britons Welsh, as the Fleming does the French or the south of Germany the Italian. A little later this German race, last in Europe to embrace the faith and first to revolt from it, overran Britain, establishing the Saxon monarchy, making Gaul the land of Franks, and giving Spain and Italy Gothic sovereigns.
Before this torrent burst, the church in Italy, Britain, and Gaul was closely united. Heresies appeared and gained ground in Britain. To meet this Pelagian enemy, the insular bishops appealed for aid to Gaul. The bishops of that country in council, selected St. Germain and St. Lupus to go to Britain; and Prosper, in his chronicle, assures us that, through the instrumentality of Palladius the deacon, Pope Celestine in 426 sent Germain in his own stead to root out heresy there, and direct the Britons to the Catholic faith.